“Baby, It’s Cold Outside“ is a pop standard with words and music by Frank Loesser. The song is popularly associated with winter weather, and although it does not refer to any specific time or holiday, it is commonly played alongside Christmas carols and popular winter holiday music.

Loesser wrote the duet in 1944 and premiered the song with his wife, Lynn Garland, at their Navarro Hotel housewarming party. Lynn considered it “their song,” and was furious when Loesser sold the song to MGM.[1]

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About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles.
Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures.
A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.

9.38pm: Now its Rick Perry versus Mitt Romney going at it – with at some point in there Mitt Romney offering to make a $10,000 bet with Perry over something Romney may or may not have said about healthcare. “I’m not in the gambling trade,” says Perry. Also, $10,000 to Romney – assets about $250m – is like a fiver to you or me.

In a bid to consolidate support within their caucus — and to flip the bird to President Obama — House Republicans have tacked a provision on to their payroll tax cut bill that would force the administration to decide whether to allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline within 60 days, instead of after the election next year as the administration currently plans.

Though controversial outside of Washington, the pipeline has bipartisan support in Washington, and Republicans — itching for this fight — are banking on the idea that some Democrats will cross the aisle and put Senate Dems and Obama in a tough spot.

And to some extent they’ve been successful. Obama strongly suggested he’d veto the bill over the provision, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called it dead on arrival, and many in the media have painted the GOP’s bill as providing Dems a choice between passing the payroll tax cut and blocking the Keystone pipeline.

But that’s distracted from the fact that the House payroll tax cut bill, which also includes an extension of unemployment insurance and the so-called Medicare “doc fix,” is chockablock with other controversial measures to pay for the legislation — enough, most likely, to trigger broad Dem opposition.

Starting in 2014, the GOP proposes clawing back $13.4 billion in subsidies designed to help middle class people buy health insurance. The money would come from consumers who get a mid-year pay bump that puts pushes them into a higher income bracket.

They also want to rescind about $8 billion from the health care law’s $16 billion prevention and public health fund.

Outside of the health care law, they propose extending the current pay freeze for federal workers through October next year, increase cost-sharing for federal retirees and Medicare premiums for high-income beneficiaries. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi expressed openness to this idea last week, but at a Friday press conference, she suggested it would only be appropriate in the context of a broad compromise on deficit reduction.

Beyond the payfors, the legislation includes a provision that would block an EPA rule designed to prevent industrial boilers and incinerators from emitting toxic pollutants.

In essence, the House legislation treats the payroll tax cut as a concession, which requires them to pair it with a slew of goodies to buy GOP support. But both publicly and privately, Republican leaders say they support the payroll tax cut and that it must pass — an admission that weakens their leverage in this fight, particularly as the calendar nears January 1, when the current payroll tax cut expires.

Mitt Romney: ‘We’re Going To Have To Make Changes Like The Ones Paul Ryan Proposed’
Mitt Romney left it to his campaign surrogates yesterday to gush over Paul Ryan’s Medicare privatization plan and bash Newt Gingrich’s early opposition. But today, the candidate discussed it himself in Iowa.

Asked by an audience member at a rally whether he would sign Ryan’s plan, Romney danced around the question but made clear that he had plenty of love for the Wisconsin congressman’s approach.

“When his plan came out I applauded it as a very important step, I said my plan would be a little different,” Romney said. “This is a place where Speaker Gingrich and I disagree. He called this ‘right-wing social engineering.’ I believe it is a very important step; to protect Medicare and to protect Social Security we’re going to have to make changes like the ones Paul Ryan proposed.”

Democrats have been eagerly watching Mitt Romney to see how close he’ll hug Paul Ryan’s politically explosive Medicare plan on his quest to blunt Gingrich’s momentum. They almost certainly will be holding onto today’s clips for future use.

For what it’s worth, Romney has said in the past he would support Ryan’s plan as president if Congress passed it.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), in his quest to win the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, has released a so-called flat tax plan that would institute a 20 percent income tax rate on everyone (minus a few deductions), while completely eliminating all taxes on investment income.

This, of course, would mean a huge tax increase for those Americans who pay less than 20 percent now, and an immense tax cut for those at the top of the income scale. In fact, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, Perry’s plan would cut taxes for millionaires by nearly $500,000 every year. Meanwhile, a family making $10,000-$20,000 would pay $215 more under the plan, while a family making $20,000-$30,000 would pay nearly $500 more.

During an interview yesterday with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register, Perry essentially admitted that this analysis is correct, affirming that a low-income person with no deductions would pay the full 20 percent while someone living entirely off of investments could conceivably pay nothing:

Q: For somebody who has a home and investments and all that, an income level to have all of that, gets those deductions, but a family that doesn’t then still pays 20 percent on their total income? And I’m describing a low-income family.

PERRY: Right. That is correct. […]

Q: Talk about the difference in where people’s income comes from. The person who works, you know, punches the time clock, they would pay the 20 percent. The person who has the big nest egg from dad or grandpa, whose income derives from capital gains or dividends, would pay nothing?

PERRY: I have a hard time with nothing. I’m sure you could go find an individual or some small number of individuals that meet that characteristic. But again, I don’t think anybody’s going to be able to create a tax system that does not have somewhere an inequity.

Semantics is a branch of linguistics and logic concerned with the meaning of a word, phrase, sentence or text, and it is somewhat different than an outright lie. Politicians often use semantics to mislead and misinform voters about a policy that, if labeled accurately and truthfully, would never receive support and indeed, may doom a politician’s career. Republicans are not known for their veracity and they purposely mislead voters by using catch-phrases and buzz-words that fool their devotees into supporting policies that are not in the people’s best interest. A well-known example is Republican’s use of the phrase “job creators” as interchangeable with “wealthiest 1%” and they have been successful fostering support for increasing tax cuts for the rich by repeating that one phrase.

Republicans have long sought to privatize government programs to enrich corporations, and they have targeted various agencies and programs for transferring taxpayer dollars to the private sector under the guise of budget reduction and increased benefits to the public. Fortunately, Americans generally oppose turning over their tax dollars to private, for-profit corporations, so Republicans have generated new words to replace the term privatize. The current push to privatize Medicare has engendered words like voucher system and regardless the semantics involved, privatizing the popular healthcare program amounts to cutting Medicare. It would not be fortuitous for Republicans to announce they intended cutting Medicare, so they attempted to use semantics to trick the public into giving support for privatizing the health program.

Back in April, when Paul Ryan (R-WIS) presented the Heritage Foundation’s budget proposal, he offered a Medicare privatization scam that he labeled “premium support;” it was nothing more than a voucher system. Regardless of the label, the Heritage plan cut Medicare benefits for seniors and would increase their health care costs. A few days ago, Willard Romney said that he’s not aware of “anyone among Republicans who’s talking about cutting Medicare.” Apparently, Willard is thinking of a semantic shift because the Heritage plan, like Romney’s proposed fix for Medicare, results in drastic cuts to the successful health program.

It is astonishing that Romney said he does not know any Republicans talking about cutting Medicare because his own plan to privatize the Medicare program cuts Medicare benefits. Romney’s plan would allow Congress to vote on “the amount of premium support credits (vouchers)” that seniors receive to buy health care insurance. His plan, like the Heritage-Ryan plan, privatizes Medicare by shifting seniors to private plans and issuing them a voucher to purchase health insurance. The problem with Romney’s plan is that the vouchers will not keep up with private health insurance premiums and for seniors who cannot afford increased premiums, the result is lower quality health plans than what Medicare offers. According to Romney’s plan, it will be up to Congress to cap and approve voucher increases, or decreases, each year.

When asked if his plan would grow at the standard measure of consumer inflation or medical inflation, Romney said that Congressional action would determine whether or not the value of the vouchers would keep up with inflation or not. Romney cited Heritage as a reference for allowing Congress to annually decide how much the “total subsidy is going to be. And that would then set the limit of how much each person is going to receive.” Under the current Medicare program, for a set amount, all of a patient’s health care needs are met irrespective of Congressional action or the private sector’s increases. It is true that Congress appropriates Medicare funding, but since it is a mandatory program, it means Congress does not vote for it each year.

Willard’s plan places federal spending for senior’s health care at the whim of Congress that does nothing to reassure Medicare recipients that their coverage remains dependable or affordable. By his own admission, Romney’s plan depends on the principle that Medicare coverage will not grow at a rate dictated by medical inflation, but a rate decided on by a capricious body of lawmakers. Under his plan, the federal government’s contribution to Medicare is decreased (cut) leaving seniors to pick up the added cost or go without health care altogether. For seniors subsisting on Social Security alone, their decision will be to eat, go to the doctor, or die.

It is no wonder Romney is paranoid about calling his plan a cut to Medicare, because as it is now, Medicare is a dependable, popular, and life-saving program for a majority of seniors who exist on a fixed income. He says that no Republican is talking about cutting Medicare, but his own plan to “fundamentally transform Medicare into Medicare 2.0,” automatically cuts benefits depending on the whims of Congress and the cap on its growth every year. His plan, like the Ryan-Heritage plan will issue vouchers to seniors to buy private health coverage and if Congress decides on an amount lower than the cost of a private plan, seniors are left to fend for themselves. Medicare is a wildly popular program that guarantees affordable health care for millions of seniors regardless of private insurer’s premium increases, and Republicans cannot wait to transfer taxpayer contributions directly to the insurance industry that is notorious for raising premiums without cause.

Another voter referendum: Ohio secretary of state certifies signatures to put elections law on next year’s ballot

Voters will decide whether to approve another key piece of legislation passed by Republican lawmakers, this time an election reform bill that Democrats have called a “voter suppression” bill.
A referendum on House Bill 194, a sweeping reform of election laws, will appear on the November 2012 ballot, Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office announced Friday.

Opponents of the bill, largely Democrats and voting rights activists, collected 307,358 valid signatures, according to the secretary of state’s office. Petitioners needed 231,150 signatures to put the law on the ballot.

The successful petition drive comes on the heels of Democrats’ victory in overturning Senate Bill 5, a controversial collective bargaining law. That law, supported by Republican Gov. John Kasich and GOP legislative leaders, was overwhelmingly rejected in the November election.

Members and supporters of the Fair Elections Ohio coalition cheered the news Friday and predicted victory next November.

“We will wage a robust campaign in 2012 that reflects that spirit,” former Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a lead organizer of the effort, said in an emailed statement.

By hanging a referendum on HB 194, Fair Elections Ohio preserved the existing elections law through at least next year’s presidential contest. That means a 35-day window for early voting and other practices seen as advantageous to Democrats in 2008 will remain in effect.

Republican “extremism” is the only thing stopping Congress from finalizing an extension of the payroll-tax cut and getting out of town for the holidays, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi charged Friday.

The California Democrat hammered the tax package from House Republicans, warning that the addition of “poison pill” riders — particularly language expediting approval of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline — means the bill is dead on arrival.

Their proposal doesn’t have a shot,” Pelosi said during a brief press event in the Capitol. “What we’re doing here is pointless because it isn’t going to pass the Senate.”

Pelosi said she hadn’t seen the final language of the Republican bill, which was posted roughly an hour before her news conference. But the inclusion of the Keystone language — designed to attract the support of wary conservatives — indicates the GOP “isn’t serious” about enacting the legislation, Pelosi charged.

Noting that many Republicans initially opposed an extension of the payroll-tax holiday, Pelosi applauded GOP leaders for finally getting behind that provision.

“But,” Pelosi added, “[they] put so many poison pills on it that it couldn’t possibly survive.

“We don’t have time for sending messages. We have to create work for the American people.

“It’s not about what the American people are thinking — they support a payrol-tax cut, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans or independents,” she added. “It’s about the extremism of the Republicans in the House of Representatives that remains the obstacle to this tax cut.”

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) joined the criticism Friday, saying the “unrelated and controversial” additions in the Republicans’ final proposal will likely sink the bill.

“Democrats remain willing to work with Republicans to extend these critical measures before Congress adjourns for the year,” Hoyer said in a news release, “but I do not believe that the plan Republican leaders proposed this morning would be the best path forward to do so.”

Eddie Murphy to Play Marion Barry in HBO Biopic From Spike LeeJohn Ridley would pen the script for the untitled project.
9:15 PM PST 12/8/2011 by Philiana Ng

Eddie Murphy may be headed back to the small screen.

HBO Films is developing an untitled television biopic centered on former Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, whom Murphy would play should the project move forward, a source confirms to The Hollywood Reporter.

Spike Lee is attached to direct with John Ridley (Red Tails, Da Brick) to pen the script. Murphy, Lee and Ridley would all serve as executive producers as the Washington Post first reported.

Journalists Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood have been tapped to consult, along with The Nine Lives of Marion Barry filmmakers Dana Flor and Toby Oppenheimer. Jaffe and Sherwood penned a book published in 1994 entitled Dream City detailing politics in D.C.

Barry served as the D.C. mayor from 1979 to 1991 and again from 1995 to 1999, and is currently a member of the D.C. City Council representing the city’s eighth ward. In January 1990, Barry was caught smoking crack cocaine at the Vista International Hotel in downtown and was arrested on drug charges, serving six months in prison.

VANCOUVER – Mounties say they’ve put a dent in organized hate in British Columbia after arresting two alleged neo-Nazis for several racist, violent attacks, but an expert says there’s still more work needed to stem white pride sentiments in the province.

The two men are accused of belonging to the B.C.-faction of the white supremacist group Blood and Honour, which has tentacles around the world. Their crimes, police say, occurred in Vancouver and date back to 2008.

Robertson De Chazal, 25, is charged with aggravated assault and assault causing bodily harm in connection with two incidents, while Shawn MacDonald, 30, faces three counts of assault. Both are from the Vancouver area.

De Chazal is one of three people accused in an apparently random October 2009 attack.

Police say a 25-year-old Filipino man, who fell asleep on a discarded couch outside after a night of drinking, was doused in accelerant and set on fire. He suffered burns to his arms, neck and head.

The second charge relates to a beating one month earlier in which a black man was knocked unconscious.

The charges against MacDonald relate to incidents in 2008 and 2010 that injured a black man, a Hispanic man and an aboriginal woman.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court late Friday granted a request from Texas Republicans and said it would intervene in a momentous dispute over redistricting and the voting power of minorities.

The justices, setting oral arguments for Jan. 9, are about to enter one of most contentious state battlegrounds in the wake of the 2010 Census and the new national round of redistricting.

The justices blocked Texas from using state legislative and congressional maps drawn by a lower court as a substitute to a state map. That court had said the state map could undermine the voting rights of Latinos and blacks. Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other state officials said the lower court exceeded its authority and should have deferred to the Texas legislature, which is controlled by Republicans.

Italian cat inherits €10m fortuneFour-year-old stray becomes world’s richest feline after death of 94-year-old mistress
Tommaso, a four-year-old, one-time stray from Rome, is thought to have become the world’s richest cat.

Since the death of his 94-year-old mistress last month, he has become a property magnate — or perhaps mognate — with flats and houses worth an estimated €10m scattered from Milan in the north to Calabria in the south.

In a handwritten will, signed on 26 November, 2009, Tommaso’s mistress — the childless widow of a successful builder — gave her lawyers the task of identifying “the animal welfare body or association to which to leave the inheritance and the task of looking after the cat Tommaso”.

One of the lawyers, Anna Orecchioni, told the Rome daily Il Messaggero they considered several organisations without getting adequate guarantees of the cat’s future comfort and welfare. In the meantime, the old lady met a fellow cat-lover – named only as Stefania – in a park. “Sometimes I’d go to her house so my cat could play with Tommaso,” Stefania said.

As the old lady became increasingly frail, Stefania, a nurse, began to take care of her.

WASHINGTON — Last year, the Obama administration vowed to stop for-profit colleges from luring students with false promises. In an opening volley that shook the $30 billion industry, officials proposed new restrictions to cut off the huge flow of federal aid to unfit programs.

But after a ferocious response that administration officials called one of the most intense they had seen, the Education Department produced a much-weakened final plan that almost certainly will have far less impact as it goes into effect next year

A Republican is convicted for authorizing misleading “robocalls” – just one tactic being used to deter voters.

Those who are still confused about why Republicans spend so much energy making it harder for people to vote should pay some attention to a case that concluded this week in a courtroom in Baltimore. There, the campaign manager for 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate, and former Maryland governor, Robert Ehrlich was tried and found guilty of election fraud based on an attempt to suppress the African-American vote by authorizing the use of misleading robocalls.

The 23-second calls (listen to one here), targeted at 110,000 homes in Baltimore City and Prince George’s County three hours before polls closed on election night in 2010, told voters that they could stay home. Incumbent Gov. Martin O’Malley and President Obama, the voice on the phone explained, had been “successful.” The caller encouraged voters to just “watch the returns on TV.”

Knowing a couple of important points may help those outside Maryland understand the Republican candidate’s effort. First, the calls were all targeted at Baltimore City and Prince George’s County – the two largest majority-black jurisdictions in the state. Second, President Obama wasn’t even on the ballot in 2010. So ubiquitous were the calls in African-American homes in Baltimore that at least one of the calls went to the home of the (African-American) judge presiding over the case.

This case was a slam dunk. Paul Schurick, the campaign manager, admitted that he had authorized the consulting firm run by notorious Baltimore election guru Julius Henson to allow the phone calls. Henson, who is black, has been known for campaign tactics that skate close to the line. He has worked for both Democrats and Republicans.

His robocall plan appears to have been advanced in response to the now routine concern of Republicans seeking office in states with a large black voting bloc: how to avoid high black-voter turnout on Election Day. The question the campaign’s political director sent in an email to Schurick on Election Day stated the concern succinctly: “What does [Henson] need to make [Baltimore] city turnout stay low?” The answer was provided by Henson and approved by Schurick, who read the text of the proposed call before authorizing it.

Earlier in the year, the campaign had rejected a proposal by Henson to use robocalls statewide. According to Schurick, the campaign had originally hoped to “woo” crossover black voters. But on Election Day, when it became clear that the plan had failed, Schurick authorized the calls.

For black voters in Maryland, this was not the first run-in with Ehrlich’s racial manipulations on Election Day. In 2006 the campaign of then-Gov. Ehrlich hired a busload of homeless men (mostly black) from Philadelphia to hand out Ehrlich flyers at voting precincts in Baltimore. The governor’s wife, Kendall, reportedly gave the “volunteers” – most of whom had no idea they’d walked into the middle of a racially charged election campaign – a pep talk when they arrived and served doughnuts.

When President Obama makes his pitch to voters next year on why they should elect him to a second term, he’ll likely point to some version of this chart.

What the following chart shows is that Obama inherited a bum economy but that, under his watch, things have begun to turn around. In the past year, the unemployment rate has dropped a full percentage point amid improving job growth. Assuming those trends continue, Obama will be able to say that, yes, the economy needs to be much stronger, but that it’s currently heading in the right direction.

That exact pitch helped Reagan win his 1984 reelection bid when he destroyed Walter Mondale —Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota and Washington D.C. — despite an unemployment rate of 7.4% on election day. One year earlier, unemployment stood at 8.8%, higher than it is today, but it then steadily ticked down over the following months.

Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected female president, shared the award with women’s rights campaigner Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia, and Tawakkul Karman, a female icon of the protest movement in Yemen.

By selecting Karman the prize committee recognized the Arab Spring movement that has toppled autocratic leaders in North Africa and the Middle East. Praising Karman’s struggle against Yemen’s dictatorship, Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland also sent a message to Syria’s leader Bashar Assad, whose crackdown on a monthslong rebellion has killed more than 4,000 people according to U.N. estimates.

“President Assad in Syria will not be able to resist the people’s demand for freedom of human rights,” Jagland said.

Karman is first Arab woman to win the prize and at 32 the youngest peace laureate ever. A journalist and founder of the human rights group Women Journalists without Chains, she also is a member of the Islamic party Islah.

Wearing headphones over her Islamic headscarf, she clapped her hands and smiled as she listed to a translation of Jagland’s introductory remarks.

In her acceptance speech, Karman paid tribute to Arab women “without whose hard struggles and quest to win their right in a society dominated by the supremacy of men I wouldn’t be here,” according to an English translation of her comments in Arabic.

She directed most of her criticism against the “repressive, militarized, corrupt” regime of outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh, but also lamented that the revolution in Yemen hasn’t gained as much international attention as the revolts in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria.

GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry had some fighting words for President Obama in his new “Strong” ad campaign this week.

In a 31-second soft-focus spot, the Texas governor questions the president’s faith and declares that Obama’s policies, including allowing gays to serve openly in the military, amount to a “war on religion.”

Now the White House is striking back with perhaps the most stinging type of rebuke: the silent treatment.

Asked Friday about Perry’s attack on Obama’s religious faith, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said: “I’m sure the president is not even aware of these accusations.”

So, another reporter followed up, what does the White House think about the ad?

“I’m going to limit my comments on the struggling state of some campaigns,” Carney replied, moving on to unrelated questions.

DES MOINES, Iowa – As he railed against “activist” judges, Texas Gov. Rick Perry slipped up on not only the name of one of the Supreme Court justices but also on how many sit on the bench.

“When you see his appointment of two, from my perspective, inarguably activist judges whether it was …” Perry said in the Des Moines Register editorial board meeting, pausing for six seconds. “Not Montemayor …”

Shortly after this flub, Perry referred to ”eight unelected” judges when discussing who should decide whether prayer is allowed in schools.

“For Washington to tell a local school district that you cannot have a prayer and a time of prayer in that school is, I think, offensive to most Americans. I trust the people of the states to make those decisions. I trust those independent school districts to make those decisions better than eight unelected, and frankly, unaccountable judges,” Perry said.

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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.